Supreme Court frees businesses, unions to spend big on elections

The Associated PressIn a sweeping 5-4 ruling, the divided court freed business and unions to spend their millions directly to sway elections for president and Congress.The U.S. Supreme Court vastly increased the powers of big business and unions to influence government decisions Thursday, recasting the U.S. political landscape in advance of crucial congressional elections in November.

In a sweeping 5-4 ruling, the divided court freed business and unions to spend their millions directly to sway elections for president and Congress. The ruling overturned parts of a 63-year-old law that said companies and unions could be forbidden to use money from their general treasuries to produce and run campaign ads urging the election or defeat of particular candidates by name.

The decision applies to independent spending that is not coordinated with candidates and threatens similar limits imposed by 24 of the 50 states.

The court thus set conditions for a wave of likely repercussions, from new pressures on lawmakers to heed special interest demands to increasingly boisterous campaigns featuring highly charged ads that drown out candidate voices.

While the full consequences of the decision were hard to measure, politicians made clear whom they believed benefited. Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, condemned the decision, while Republicans cheered it. In U.S. politics, unions tend to support Democrats, business Republicans.

Still, more labor and corporate money in the political system could dilute the role of both political parties.

The decision also seeded the ground for further challenges to an already weakened system of campaign finance regulations.

The justices weighed two fundamental political forces, the power of the central government and the concentration of corporate wealth, and tilted decidedly in favor of the latter. The opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy made a vigorous argument based on the Constitution for the right of the public to be exposed to a multitude of ideas and against the ability of government to limit political speech, even in the interest of fighting corruption.

"The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach," Kennedy wrote.

Strongly dissenting, Justice John Paul Stevens said, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined Kennedy to form the majority in the main part of the case. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens' dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The ruling will lead to a "stampede of special interest money in our politics," Obama said. He pledged to work with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to come up with a "forceful response" to the high court's action.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, who filed the first lawsuit challenging the McCain-Feingold law, praised the court for restoring free-speech rights to corporations and unions.

The court overturned two earlier decisions and threw out parts of the 1947 law that had allowed the corporate and union restrictions. The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, enacted in 2001, which barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions and did not touch the McCain-Feingold ban on unlimited corporate and union donations to political parties. Nor did it disturb companies' right to solicit voluntary contributions to political action committees that can donate directly to candidates.

Corporations and unions still would have to identify the sources of money for their political activity, a provision of current law that the court upheld in an 8-1 vote.